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From this basis we proceed:
In the advancing stages of Contemplation rising from that in
Nature, to that in the Soul and thence again to that in the
Intellectual-Principle itself- the object contemplated becomes
progressively a more and more intimate possession of the
Contemplating Beings, more and more one thing with them; and in
the advanced Soul the objects of knowledge, well on the way
towards the Intellectual-Principle, are close to identity with
their container.
Hence we may conclude that, in the Intellectual-Principle Itself,
there is complete identity of Knower and Known, and this not by
way of domiciliation, as in the case of even the highest soul,
but by Essence, by the fact that, there, no distinction exists
between Being and Knowing; we cannot stop at a principle
containing separate parts; there must always be a yet higher, a
principle above all such diversity.
The Supreme must be an entity in which the two are one; it will,
therefore, be a Seeing that lives, not an object of vision like
things existing in something other than themselves: what exists
in an outside element is some mode of living-thing; it is not the
Self-Living.
Now admitting the existence of a living thing that is at once a
Thought and its object, it must be a Life distinct from the
vegetative or sensitive life or any other life determined by
Soul.
In a certain sense no doubt all lives are thoughts- but qualified
as thought vegetative, thought sensitive and thought psychic.
What, then, makes them thoughts?
The fact that they are Reason-Principles. Every life is some form
of thought, but of a dwindling clearness like the degrees of life
itself. The first and clearest Life and the first Intelligence
are one Being. The First Life, then, is an Intellection and the
next form of Life is the next Intellection and the last form of
Life is the last form of Intellection. Thus every Life, of the
order strictly so called, is an Intellection.
But while men may recognize grades in life they reject grade in
thought; to them there are thoughts [full and perfect] and
anything else is no thought.
This is simply because they do not seek to establish what Life
is.
The essential is to observe that, here again, all reasoning shows
that whatever exists is a bye-work of visioning: if, then, the
truest Life is such by virtue of an Intellection and is identical
with the truest Intellection, then the truest Intellection is a
living being; Contemplation and its object constitute a living
thing, a Life, two inextricably one.
The duality, thus, is a unity; but how is this unity also a
plurality?
The explanation is that in a unity there can be no seeing [a pure
unity has no room for vision and an object]; and in its
Contemplation the One is not acting as a Unity; if it were, the
Intellectual-Principle cannot exist. The Highest began as a unity
but did not remain as it began; all unknown to itself, it became
manifold; it grew, as it were, pregnant: desiring universal
possession, it flung itself outward, though it were better had it
never known the desire by which a Secondary came into being: it
is like a Circle [in the Idea] which in projection becomes a
figure, a surface, a circumference, a centre, a system of radii,
of upper and lower segments. The Whence is the better; the
Whither is less good: the Whence is not the same as the
Whence-followed-by-a-Whither; the Whence all alone is greater
than with the Whither added to it.
The Intellectual-Principle on the other hand was never merely the
Principle of an inviolable unity; it was a universal as well and,
being so, was the Intellectual-Principle of all things. Being,
thus, all things and the Principle of all, it must essentially
include this part of itself [this element-of-plurality] which is
universal and is all things: otherwise, it contains a part which
is not Intellectual-Principle: it will be a juxtaposition of
non-Intellectuals, a huddled heap waiting to be made over from
the mass of things into the Intellectual-Principle!
We conclude that this Being is limitless and that, in all the
outflow from it, there is no lessening either in its emanation,
since this also is the entire universe, nor in itself, the
starting point, since it is no assemblage of parts [to be
diminished by any outgo].
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